The Ideology Trap: China and the Limits of Cold War Analogies

Many frame current U.S.-China ideological competition as analogous to the Cold War. But the authors show that such analogies are misplaced. They argue that ideologies vary on two dimensions: universal vs. particularist content, and expansive vs limited scope of promotion. Examining how ideology evolved in the Soviet Union and China, the authors show that there was no single Cold War, and that contemporary China differs in important ways from the Soviet Union.